About

Solar City: a solarpunk game

$67,929

834

backers

Solar City is a solarpunk board game with a unique Build and Block mechanics, designed by Marcin Ropka & Viola Kijowska, authors of widely acknowledged in 2017 Alien Artifacts.

Lead the Solar Revolution – become an architect, biologist, designer or scientist of the future and transform the old city landscape into a solar eco garden. Introduce improvements that will heal the damaged ecosystem of our planet and save the Earth from an oncoming catastrophe!

Solar City will have double campaign: in Polish and in English. It will be you, our dear supporters, who along with the rest of the world will make the final word on publishing our original game as well as on its components – you can unlock targets on zagramw.to and Kickstarter!

How does it work? After the core game is funded, funding of every stretch goal will be calculated based on what BOTH campaigns manage to accumulate, ensuring that both English and Polsih versions will be as full of content as possible!

• BEST PRICE – Supporting the game on kickstarter means guarantee that the price offered within the first 24 hours of the campaign will be the lowest ever. You will not buy it cheaper anywhere else. o During the first 24 hours of the campaign the price will be $44. Great value compared to the suggested retail price of $55. This means that the fastest supporters will save $11 on their pledge!

• FAST DELIVERY – You will be the first to get the game! In fact it will arrive at your doorstep sooner than to the stores and wholesalers. Fast delivery is our way to say thank you for your patience and support for this original project.

• UNIQUE COMPONENTS! – If you support our game you will get 6 additional, unique Skyscrapers / Skygardens (as well as their cards equivalents), that will not be part of a normal retail sale. You will also receive any unlocked components, including solo mode, new Public Structures, and new Skyscrapers / Skygardens.

With your help we’d like to improve the air quality in Poland. In collaboration with one of the Polish districts we’ll be planting new trees. How many? That depends on you! Every Solar City core game sold means one sapling being planted! Small changes made today result in great change in the future.

Today you can protect the environment by playing board games!

Report from the planting process will be published on campaign page and some of you may even be asked to help us with the planting itself!

The year is 2035. The supremacy of global technocratic corporations linked to world’s superpowers and led to exploitation and degradation of the natural environment and thus to the destruction of Earth’s ecosystem. As a result of following wars, riots, abuse, hunger and diseases one third of the global population died. Soon all alliances collapsed and countries bankrupted and fell into ruin. People started to form smaller, more egalitarian, clan-like communities and turn their back on capitalism and global technocracy. Humanity slowly started to rebuild what was broken.

Solar City is a solarpunk board game with a unique Build and Block mechanics, designed by Marcin Ropka & Viola Kijowska, authors of widely acknowledged in 2017 Alien Artifacts. Lead the Solar Revolution – become an architect, biologist, designer or scientist of the future and transform the old urban landscape into a vibrant, ecological city.

The main feature of Solar City is its unique mechanics of Build and Block. Each player’s city is divided into 4 rows and 4 columns that will be empty at the beginning of the game. Player’s action consists of two elements: 1) choosing a building to buy from building’s pool (a Skyscraper or a Public Structure) and 2) choosing a square to place the building on. After paying the right amount of eco-ins to the bank, choose the row or column in which you have just placed your building and which have not yet been activated and activate it by using the actions of all the buildings within the chosen space. You can activate the Skygarden in the same manner – the only difference is you turn your building tile upside down instead of adding a new one.

The entire procedure of building and locking has two important strategic consequences: it means that each player creates unique, one of a kind (even in terms of each game played) “engine” that is used for gaining eco-ins and Solar Points. It also means that other players will not be able to use their buildings in the same column or row!

We've showcased the final version of the game not long ago at UK Game Expo - biggest british hobby event! The reception was wonderful and we've been very much surprised by sheer number of people willing to try out Solar City and enthusiasm with which they reacted to their playthroughs. We present short video material from that event:

Powerful Corporations have started their fight for influence over the city. Solar Revolution, noble idea that once gathered mightiest minds fighting for common goal – the restoration of the environment, turned to a cruel fight for profits. Merciles lobbying from the developers interested only in most valuable plots of land for their majestic skyscrapers brings with it its first victims.

The agreement between corporations’ owners, one that took so much work to come to life, is being broken daily and brutal laws of the market drag unwary investors to the edge of bankruptcy. Ecological revolution shows its other, darker, face.

Welcome to The Solar City: Heart of the City expansion, first of the two. Inside, you’ll find 6 new building types. Every one of them introduces interaction between players. Invest in others’ real estate, gain influence over your opponent’s city or activate your districts gathering tax from other players. You’ll find this and much more in the heart of the city, where fight for influence took entirely new appearance! Buildings from the expansion can be freely mixed with buildings from the core game.

The city grows, encroaching upon regions that not long ago were Green and unblemished by bulldozers’ tracks. Newly constructed skyscrapers tower upon long abandoned single story houses, inhabitants of which long since gone to friendlier places or died due to one of the numerous illnesses brought by civilization.

Large swathes of ground on the city’s outskirts are cheap, easy to develop and, most importantly, unimaginably profitable. Their creation and upkeep of necessary infrastructure is linked to huge risks. Further the investments are from the center, larger the potential profits, but if they turn out to be overinvested, losses can drag even the most stable corporation down.

We introduce the second of Solar City’s expansions: Solar City: Suburbs. Here you’ll find 6 completely new building types, introducing solutions revolutionizing how buildings work and gaining profits from developer investments. Every investment here is inherently linked with financial risk and the expansion itself introduces some degree of randomness concerning building activation.

Daring construction plans allow you to copy effects of other buildings and even profit from activation of other districts! See what risky investments in Solar City can earn you! Buildings from the expansion can be freely mixed with buildings from the core game.

And more to follow!

Game setup

Start with setting up the game: prepare eco-ins pool and Solar Points pool and place them on the table so that each player could reach for them easily. Place the round marker on 1st round square. Mark the basic cost of purchasing Skyscrapers and Skygardens on your player board. At the beginning of the game the basic cost equals 0, but it will grow with each new building in your city.

Each gameplay in Solar City will be different. One of the reasons why is random choosing of 6 buildings tiles that will participate in particular game. To do that you will use buildings cards which also informs about the specific rules of each Skyscraper. Draw 6 cards from the deck and place them on the table in 3 stacks, each containing 2 types of Skyscrapers. Prepare the stack of Public Structures. Turn the first 3 cards face up a place certain amount of eco-ins on them. This is a discount on purchasing those 3 buildings. The discount will grow with each round. Finally, give each player starting amount of eco-ins. Now you are ready to play!

Gameplay

During your turn you can choose one of the following actions:

A) purchasing a Skyscraper from the top of one of available stacks; B) building a Public Structure; C) activating a Skygarden

Choose an empty square inside not yet activated row or column and pay the right amount of eco-ins to activate it. You will activate not only the chosen building but also all of the buildings placed in that row or column. Together they can create a powerful combination and bring you additional eco-ins or Solar Points. After you finish your turn, the next player starts his or her turn.

Players can borrow eco-ins from the bank at any point of the game, but be careful as the rates are very high. If you borrow eco-ins will have to return a double amount at the endo of the game or face loosing points.

The round ends when all of the rows and columns are activated. Players add all of the bonuses active at the beginning and at the end of a round, remove all activation markers and add new Public Structures or eco-ins remained form the discount. Then a new round begins.

Risks and challenges

The game is almost finished at this point. All elements are availible for viewing in the campaign and the expansions only add more possibilities to the game. Most of the stretch goals will be availible only during the campaign. Marcin Ropka, one of the authors, is keeping watch over the entirety of the project: the game is already priced, the elements are agreed upon with their producers, and the last details will be worked through during the campaign, where you, dear backers, will make publishing of the game in best possible quality possible.

Our goal is to create both English and Polsih editions of the game. Many of our goals are exclusive for Kickstarter and we assure: they will never be availible in retail version. Possible leftovers from the production might be availible for sale on some of the largest boardgame events or used in other ways as amean of promotion. It will not, however, be availible in shops.

Delivery Time
Backers from Australia, Asia and most locations in Central America will most likely receive their rewards later than the rest of the backers. Backers from these regions will receive packages from Poland, sent via local postal services. If we are able to a better solution for sending these rewards, we will contact you personally.

Mistakes and damaged components
Fulfilment for this campaign is being done by professional companies, although there’s always a chance that something goes wrong. If such a thing happens, please email us at info@gamesfactory.pl and we will send you replacements with all due haste.